The fiddler nodded, though his face was scarcely less taut than the slave's and he leaned on the dining table.
"Fast, then, before they realize we're making an escape."
The room was pitch-dark and nearly empty save for the table at which Mme. Trepagier did her accounts. Dominique and January lifted it to move it under the window, lest the scrape of its legs on the tile floor alert anyone above; January sprang up, flipped the latch, and squeezed through. As he dropped the five feet to the grass beneath he heard a man shout, "There's one of'em!" and a shot splintered stucco from the wall near his head, from the corner of the front gallery.
He looked fast-two flatboat men were standing at the end of the front gallery, looking around the corner of the house, one reloading already and the second bringing his rifle to bear. It could only have been chance that they'd been standing where they could see the window. With only the shotgun in his hand there was no way he could return fire. All this he saw and thought in a split second; then he heard Mayerling yell, "Run!" and the flat hard roar of a Baker rifle, and what might have been a cry of pain.
He heard the crunch of feet in the grass as a man dropped off the gallery and saw the glint of a knife; heard, also, Madeleine Trepagier sob out Mayerling's name, as he turned and plunged away alone into the darkness of the night.
TWENTY-THREE
Another rifle cracked out, the thud of the ball striking not far to January's left as he raced into the darkness. Feet trip-hammered the ground behind. It wouldn't take Napoleon to figure out that if Madeleine had an armed escort, reinforcements weren't far behind. The attackers couldn't afford to let
anyone get away. January shucked his coat as he ran, ripped free his shirt, legs pumping, dodging and weaving but running with all the speed in his long legs. The lights from the house barely touched the trunks of the willows around the main buildings, glimmered on the trailing leaves and the beards of moss on the oaks.
Beyond them it was lightless, Erebus under a sky of pitch.
January leaped six or seven feet sideways and fell to his face on the earth.
The soft crunch-crunch-crunch of pursuing feet stopped.
Loading? Aiming? Taking his time to site on a sitting
Or baffled by the sudden silence, the utter dark into which his skin blended like glass into water, one with the damp velvet obscurity of the night.
Lying on the ground, just beyond the line of weeds where the dug fields began, January could see his pursuer as a blocky shape against what dim illumination filtered through the trees. The shape moved a little. Turning its head? Waiting for eyesight to adjust?
January lay still.
The man would have stalked Indians in the Missouri woods and been stalked by them. He would have the patience of the hunter.
And for a long while, in fact, he stood exactly as he was, only turning his head the slightest bit-January guessed rather than clearly saw the movement-as he listened. Now and then a gunshot cracked out from the direction of the house. Sometimes he could hear a man swear.
Then, very cautiously, the pursuer began to move. By the way he moved-slowly, cautiously, but straight ahead-January knew that he was himself invisible against the dark earth. And just as slowly, timing his movements with those of his hunter, he crawled.
The ground sloped down, wet and thick smelling. He was between the bare humped earth of the cane rows, the hunter moving to his right. He heard the wet suck of mud on the man's boots, saw dimly, dimly, the black shape of him move. He'd seek higher ground and be looking in the direction of his feet.
January struck.
He was within a few feet of the Kaintuck, though the smell of the rain-wet earth drowned all the feral sweat-and-tobacco stench of him. It was easy to reach out and grab the man's legs, jerk them back, drop the man down with a cry into the soft earth. January was ready. The Kaintuck was not. The man flailed with his knife as January rammed his knee below the breastbone, grabbed verminous handfuls of hair and beard, and slammed the head around and sideways. There was a quick crack like an oak stick breaking underfoot, and the smell of voided waste.
"Lordy, Lordy," murmured January under his breath. "My massa gwine wear me out for sure."
He supposed he'd have to confess this next Friday- not, of course, in any church in the old town, nor would he mention the color of the man he had killed-but he had to admit that he felt not the smallest twinge of remorse.
He knew enough to stay low as he searched the body, appropriating knife, powder horn, and long rifle. He checked the load with the ramrod, felt the rod's end jar on patch and ball.
He'd expected it, but had to be sure.
More shots, echoing in the night. January turned back, saw figures moving among the trees, around the house. He thought, They'll have locked up the slaves somewhere, only to realize in the next instant they'd have chained them as well. Probably in the sugar mill, the only brick building large enough to hold even so small a contingent as Les Saules's. He wondered if Claud Trepagier and McGinty would sell them later or blame the whole business on a slave uprising.
Not if the bodies were shot, he thought. And then, But to cover that, all they'd have to do is... The smell of woodsmoke reached him, sluggish on the warm spring night.
All they'd have to do is fire the house. Flames were licking up over the gallery already, bright on the wooden railings and the heavy strapwork shutters. Wood from the kitchen and the smokehouse had been piled against all the shutters on the bayou side of the house, the flame leaping from it huge and orange and new, the smoke white and fresh, billowing into the black of the sky. Against the brightness of the fire January could see the shapes of men, outlined in red, coarse shirts of plaid or trade goods or rough linsey-woolsey, homespun pants slick with grease, the glitter of cold animal eyes. They stood in a rough semicircle, facing inward toward the house, their guns pointed at the door.
If he stepped from the shelter of the willows, January thought quite calmly, the firelight would show him up, but a Kentucky long rifle would take the distance easily. There were six men on this side. The rest would be around the front. They all had their backs to him, but nevertheless he recognized the Irishman McGinty's copper-colored hair. The beard had seemed darker in the shadows of the house, the day January had seen him. Recognized also the way he stood, legs apart, hands thrust in the pockets of his sage-green long-tailed coat. The man beside him, dark-haired and medium-size with a look of a panther to his big body, wore a long-tailed coat also, natty but threadbare, and the fire glistened off the pomade in his hair.
He was the same build as the Turk in green, and like the Turk wore a gold signet on one hand that caught the light of the fire.
It was to him one of the rivermen spoke. "C'n we have the woman 'fore we kills her?"
"No," said the dark-haired man, and held up his rifle to firing position, looking down the barrel at the door. His voice was the voice of the orange-and-green Turk. "I want to be sure this time."
By the glaring leap of the fire January recognized Nahum Shagrue.
"Damn better be sure this time," growled McGinty. "Damn uppity bitch, I damn near swallowed my tongue when I come out here next mornin' and saw her."
"I told you I hadn't seen her in years."
"What you bet the woman comes out first?" said someone else softly.
"Which woman? White dress or gold?"
"White."
"Nah. Gonna be the blond jasper with the scar. Twenty-five cents on it."
"You got it."
"There-the door moved."
Still completely unseen, January checked the site, made completely sure of his aim-for he knew he would only have the one shot-and with quiet deliberation, squeezed the trigger and blew off the back of Claud Trepagier's head.